First
and foremost, I'd like to stress that this is an introductory course.
As much as I may want to, I can't expect to expose you to even a
respectable fraction of all the great literature that's available,
waiting, lurking in the libraries and the bookstores--maybe even on
your own bookshelf…so my goal, and I hope it's a realistic one, is to
inspire you to keep reading beyond this course. In this visual age
of the "death of the book," it would be a victory, for example, if at
the end of the semester you decided you wanted to keep this textbook
rather than sell it back.

Aside
from wanting you to enjoy literature enough to read it on your own, I
also want to help you acquire the critical thinking tools you'll need
to get the most out of literature when you do take the time to read it.
I'd like you to stop thinking about being critical as being something
nasty and evil and start thinking about being critical as being
something intelligent and worthwhile. I want to share with you some
criteria you can use to help you choose literature you'll find
personally rewarding, whatever your individual taste.

Can
We Define "Worthwhile Literature"?

This
question is potentially the beginning of an interesting discussion.
It's a question
that certainly invites everyone's input.

WHAT'S
THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN WORTHWHILE AND WORTHLESS LITERATURE? Or, to put
the question in a more long-winded way: What's the difference between
literature that's artistically accomplished and "worth" studying
closely, and literature that's artistically unaccomplished and
unworthy of studying closely? (What do I mean by "worth" here? I think
I mean something like "worth our time because it'll enrich us somehow,
someway. It'll be rewarding either emotionally or intellectually.)

Make no
mistake, this is not a simple question, but a semester-long question;
we may begin to answer it, but we probably can't be definitive. I can
provide a few starters, but ultimately this is a problem every reader
solves individually: what's worth reading?

The
difference between commercial art and fine art is like the difference
between a Snickers bar and a full course meal. Commercial art functions
for us like junk food: it's quickly consumed; it attracts us with its
glossy wrapper, satisfies us temporarily with its high sugar and tasty
fat, but ultimately it just weighs us down needlessly. (Unless you have
one of those enviable super-metabolisms!) Literature that's more
artistic
functions within us more like a full course meal: it feeds our
needs, sustains us; it's healthy and nutritious, building muscle and
helping each and every cell work just right.

So like
a full course meal, literature has a sustained and sustaining effect.
We might say it creates something in us that lasts. Let's
put it this way:

1.
Worthwhile literature creates a
lasting impression.
It may be (1) provocative, daring us to voice our response, (2)
beautiful, dazzling us in some striking way that arrests and holds our
attention, (3) uncanny, puzzling us with its strangeness and
filling us with wonder that anyone could have thought up or experienced
such a thing, (4) ambiguous, inviting us to entertain more than
one possible meaning, expanding our typically narrow way of perceiving
things from one point of view, OR (5) especially meaningful, leading us
to new insights and epiphanies, offering us an understandingof ourselves and our world that
we might never have otherwise received.

whereas

Less artistically accomplished literature leaves your head the moment
you finish it. It gives you nothing to feel that isn't temporary and
vanished once consumed. There's nothing to provoke or dazzle or
wonder or think about. There's time spent but nothing gained by
it. Once you've finished reading you turn your focus to more important
things.

2.
Worthwhile literature stretches the
imagination. It's a fact about
people--we like to use our imaginations! We've been developing
literature practically forever. The earliest records of our
civilizations contain literature in the form of mythical stories, epic
poetry, tragedies, comedies, poetic odes in celebration of cultural
heroes; poster boys like Gilgamesh, Moses, Achilles and
Odysseus…. not to mention the femme fatales like Helen of Troy,
or Medea. We have loved literature a long time. As long as
we've had language, we've had literature. And imagination is
still the key to great literature. An imaginary work engages us in ways
reality doesn't. With language we can create entire mental
landscapes, and it's fun. We don't always like everything to be
familiar and comfortable. We like to discover new people and
places, explore situations we might not get a chance to experience in
real life, and literature provides this opportunity. Imagination
takes us there.

Whereas

Less
artistically accomplished literature is predictable, stale, easily
anticipated, nothing new. It's a formula. The characters are types,
maybe even offensive stereotypes. We are obviously not enlightened by
the presence of any new vision, and we quickly skip to the end to
confirm what we already predicted; we've read/heard/seen this before.
There's no reason to get involved; there's nothing for us to
imaginatively add. If we stick with these works at all, we do so
passively, as a way of turning off our minds and escaping. We get the
feeling when we're done that we just wasted a lot of time.

3.Worthwhile literature presents
an aesthetically pleasing
experience. You may want to look up "aesthetics" on the
web (try
Wikipedia.com) and think about the different ways various aesthetic
theories might be applied to literature. In A Portrait of the Artist As A Young Man,
Joyce's hero, Stephan Daedalus, echoes Thomas Aquinas by holding that
beauty
is to be found in harmony, clarity, and balance; how might this be
applied to literature? When we read we sometimes are struck by
the work's "beauty." This is an aesthetic response. We may
be stunned by the work's elegant or expressive language, the pleasing
way it sounds, or the beauty of the images it evokes. We may be
struck by the intricacy of its structure, or the way in which the
structure and the meaning blend so naturally and totally, complementing
and reflecting each other. Great literature is an art of words, a
striking verbal performance.

Whereas

Less
artistically accomplished literature does not strike the reader as
beautiful in any way. There are no expertly turned sentences to dazzle
us, no pith, no poignancy, no imagery to awe us. Language is at
best ordinary, at worst, hackneyed; nothing expressed moves us into
that airy, weightless timeless state of arrested attention. Time
ticks away. We had better things to do.

The greatness of a
work of
literature is at least partly measured by its aesthetic power, a power
measured by its power to evoke an aesthetic appreciation in its reader.
I apologize for sounding circular, but it's a fun way of asserting that
beauty is, like the saying goes, in the eye of the beholder. However,
eminent literary critic Harold Bloom asserts something a little
different when he claims, "Pragmatically, aesthetic value can be
recognized or experienced, but it cannot be conveyed to those who are
incapable of grasping its sensations and perceptions. To quarrel on its
behalf is always a blunder" (Western
Canon
17). Bloom wants to assert that if he thinks it's beautiful and
you don't, well then you are the one who's "incapable of grasping" how
beautiful it really actually is, so there's no use trying to persuade
you. Some might accuse Bloom of being a snob. Do you think
he's right or wrong?

It's
hard to deny that aesthetic appreciation--the response to beauty--is
highly subjective and personal. Although we attempt to establish
objective criteria that reward certain works of literature for their
surpassing aesthetic qualities, I am inclined to believe that
ultimately it's the individual standing before the cut who decides
whether the depths are awesome or not. And while many, including
Harold Bloom, believe that great works of literature are an acquired
taste, an "elitist phenomenon" (Western
Canon 16), I don't believe it. I believe that anyone with an
open mind, a strong, working imagination, and an appreciation of the
solitary pleasures of reading will respond to great works. The problem
is that today many have lost that last essential ingredient--an
appreciation for the solitary pleasures of reading. We've substituted
TV, film, Internet…and lost much.

In
The
Gutenberg Elegies Sven Birkerts
wrote:

"There
is one other place of sanctuary. Not a physical place--not
church or a [therapist's] office--but a metaphysical one. Depth
survives, condensed and enfolded, in authentic works of art. In
anything that can grant us true aesthetic experience. For this
experience is vertical; it transpires in deep time and, in a sense,
secures that time for us. Immersed in a ballet performance, planted in
front of a painting, we shatter the horizontal plane. Not without some
expense of energy, however. The more we live according to the lateral
orientation, the greater a blow is required, and the more disorienting
is the effect. A rather unfortunate vicious cycle can result, for the
harder it is to do the work, the less inclined we are to do it.
Paradoxically, the harder the work, the more we need to do it. We
cannot be put off by the prospect of fatigue or any incentive-withering
sense of obligation.

What
is true of art is true of serious reading as well….If we do read
perseveringly we make available to ourselves, in a most portable form,
an ulterior existence. We hold in our hands a way to cut against the
momentum of the times. We can resist the skimming tendency and delve;
we can restore, if only for a time, the vanishing assumption of
coherence. The beauty of the vertical engagement is that it does not
have to argue for itself. It is self-contained, a fulfillment."

4.
Worthwhile
literature can influence your personal development, your identity, your
sense of self, in ways you may or may not be aware of.

Whereas

Less
artistically accomplished literature influences nothing, changes
nothing, delivers nothing. There are no transformations,
subtle or otherwise. You may as well have saved yourself the time.

I think
I've always loved books, as far back as I can remember (and you may be
aware by now I like to spread that love around if I can). I've
read many that have had a profound impact on me. Have you ever
read a book that you feel influenced your self? Was there a book
back there in your young person past that you feel defined the old(er)
person you are today? If I think about the defining books in my
own reading past, I can come up with quite a few, and they're not
necessarily "highbrow."

Before
I
could even read I memorized a book called Fortunately, Unfortunately,
impressing my kindergarten teacher with my "reading skills" by reciting
the entire book. My experience with that book, my ability to memorize
it, helped me emerge from my kindergarten cocoon. It was a
really funny book and I loved hearing it so much, I memorized it
easily.

Then I
fell in love with a story from the Bible--Joseph and the Coat of
Many Colors.
I read it over and over once I learned to read (I had a nifty child's
edition). The Bible, whether or not you personally believe it is a
sacred text, has some of the greatest literature in our
heritage; even at the age of six I was moved and fascinated by the
Joseph story--the love of father for son/son for father, but the
troublesome favoritism (and didn't the Old Testament God play favorites
with his Hebrew children?), the horrible image of the pit, the
fascination of dreaming and dream interpretation, the cruelty of the
brothers, the luck, the intelligence, the amazing bigness of Joseph and
his ability to forgive. My attraction to this story probably
shaped me as a reader for the rest of my life.

But I
also remember a book called Caddie Woodlawn (a girl's
adventures out on the rugged frontier) and several books written for
youngsters about the lives of great Native American warriors (Crazy
Horse, Sitting Bull, and especially Geronimo)--those books were always
bittersweet. On the one hand, they fired my imagination, mesmerized
me--put me all over the map. Simultaneously I wanted to be
Caddie--the white daughter of frontiersmen who never seemed to question
their divine right to invade a frontier already populated by natives
who kept attacking them--and I
wanted to be a member of Geronimo's tribe, or Geronimo himself (a
little gender flexibility was necessary there)--all in the absolute
worst way. On the other hand, these narratives filled me with
sadness, because the native culture I was so enthralled by didn't exist
in my Philadelphia rowhouse neighborhood, or anywhere (it seemed)
anymore. In fact, I learned how the government had tricked or
killed or cheated practically all of the Indians I loved so much,
slaughtering in the most horrific way most of the buffalo which lay at
the center of their culture. This, along with Watergate and Vietnam,
didn't make me particularly fond of authority, but that's another
digression! Walking the endless concrete rows back and forth to
school, to the playground, to the shopping mall, I quickly discovered
that the only way I could enter this beloved realm of adventure was to
read the books, more and more books. And then in my rebellious preteen
years I came across two immensely influential books--The Outsiders
and That Was Then, This Is Now. The love affair that was
kindled early was now fully stoked and the sparks went flying. That
fire is still burning brightly.

Sven
Birkerts also writes in The Gutenberg Elegies
about working at Borders bookstore and seeing people wandering up and
down the isles in search, it seemed to him, not of a book, but of an
experience, a book to transport them. These people were not simply
looking for escape, although escape became a byproduct of the
experience; more than escaping, they were transforming, transporting
their consciousness inward. The flame they hoped to fan, the experience
they were seeking, seemed to be an inward one. Here's Birkerts
describing his own experience with books:

....I read.
I
moved into the space of reading as into a dazzling counterworld. I
loved just thinking about books, their wonderful ciphering of thought
and sensation. I was pleased by the fact that from a distance, even
from a nearby but disinterested vantage, every page looked more or less
the same. A piano roll waiting for its sprockets. But for the devoted
user of the code that same page was experience itself. I understood
that this was something almost completely beyond legislation. No one,
not even another reader reading the same words, could know what those
signs created once they traveled up the eyebeam.

Reading,
reading well, is above all a means of turning on an inward light, and
it creates such a powerful impact that it transforms a person's
consciousness.

Whether
you remember a special book is an interesting question for us all to
entertain, I think. If it wasn't a book that changed you, was it a
movie, a TV show? A video game? From what avenue of culture
did the defining influence come? A song? A band? Did
you listen to a certain song and come away transformed forever?
Were there one or several influences you can point to--a book, a
story, a TV show, a movie, a song, a painting--that helped turn you
into the person you are today?

In the
generation just before mine, a defining book was On the Road by
Jack Kerouac. The number of people who were influenced by this
book is probably inestimable. Ironically, though, many of the
baby boomers who were deeply influenced by this book testify that they
can't even read the thing today, they think it's so bad…but it
captivated them at the time. They stood before it in absolute
awe; and it changed them. They morphed. They were standing up straight
and suddenly they slouched. They were living in a Burg and
suddenly they were on the blue highway, hitching toward California.
It's a powerful transformation literature can create. And
the nice thing is that culturally, it's a pleasure that can be shared
or experienced solo.

5. Worthwhile
literature communicates
across cultural boundaries--because its message is universal--and
across centuries--because the truth it expresses is timeless.
Shakespeare's drama can play across the globe in cultures remote
from
Elizabethan Britain. Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman,
despite its pointed, relentless indictment of certain tendencies in
American culture, provokes tears in Japan (admittedly, the cultures are
somewhat similar, though the differences are striking). Americans fell
in love with Zenmaster Luke Skywalker and the whole notion of the
Taoist-inspired "force," enjoying his very Oriental, very Japanese,
swordplay.

Whereas

Less
artistically accomplished literature is embedded/cemented permanently
in the time and place in which it was created. Although it may capture
the zeitgeist, it never transcends it; never reaching beyond its
immediate milieu, its meanings will fade with time, and when enough
time goes by, its relevance will completely vanish. You'll have to
consult special historical reference works to make much sense of it at
all. It'll seem either amusingly antiquated or deadly dull.

6. Worthwhile
literature will be
accepted into the "canon," the always controversial, never-agreed-upon
body of great literature--the "A LIST." Who gets to be in the
canon?
Who will we require our children and our college students to read? Who
will we suggest represents the best our culture has to offer? Only the
"best" literature is included in the canon…

whereas

Less
artistically accomplished literature will be dropped from nearly
everyone's reading list a few years, maybe sooner.

The
controversy arises when we consider that established standard of
"excellence" are extremely difficult to agree upon. Many have
argued that traditionally these standards have been unfairly biased,
privileging white males--that the Western tradition has excluded
females and minorities. These arguments have helped "open up" the canon
to work that were previously, wrongly ignored. The term
"canon"
comes from the Greek "kanon," which means "rod, rule." It also recalls
the books of the Bible that have been officially recognized. Keeping
these definitions in mind, we can perhaps see that, as used in
reference to literature, the "canon" refers those works which have met
or exceeded the established standards for literary greatness and have
therefore been "officially recognized" by the academy as worthwhile
objects of study.

What
book or books have you read that you believe, unreservedly, belong in
the "canon"? What canonical books have you studied that you
believe don't deserve to be there?

SUMMING UPFormulaic,
clichéd, non-complex: that somewhat sums up the throwaway
variety of literature.
Provocative,
meaningful, complex, ambiguous: that somewhat sums up the built-to-last
variety of literature.